Global warming and population growth are increasingly creating water shortages that place great strains on our natural water sources. As we are all aware, many areas within the United States are already experiencing grave water shortages. The Western states and, more specifically, California have numerous locales wherein the current water situation has reached critical stages.
In Southern California a large desalinization plant has been built by one of the local communities to run sea water through evaporators in the conventional manner so as to distill it and produce pure drinkable (potable) water. As one can expect, the evaporating process is slow, plants are expensive to build and also very expensive to keep in operation. Maintenance of such a plant requires constant monitoring of the evaporators to insure that deposits on the evaporator coils do not exceed tolerable limits. When the deposits build-up excessively, they act as an insulator and reduce the rate of heat transfer to the interior of the evaporators. Thus, from time to time, the evaporators have to be shut down and opened up to remove the coils for cleaning of the deposit build-up. This overall cleaning operation is extremely labor-intensive and requires many man-hours of work before the particular evaporator can be returned to service.
Additionally, the most common energy source for powering the above evaporators is oil, usually of a grade comparable to home heating oil. As is well known, our supplies of such energy sources are rather limited and to a large extent, their availability depends on the whims of certain Mideastern countries.
In addition to the above-noted severe water shortage, this country is also experiencing critical difficulties in the disposition of sewage, industrial or agricultural sludge and all other forms of polluted water. The present state of environmental concern demands that individuals and corporations no longer dump their waste by-products in the community sewage system or into the nearest river or tributary thereof. Further, the very impurities polluting the waste water could, if recycled, prove to be a lucrative source of valuable raw materials.